Gustafsson, Rebecka

Taking care of small children : A document analysis between 1931 - 1940's (English)

Abstract [en]

This is a study about children’s welfare and the Child Care Board way of working in Malmö city. We decided to make this a narrative and document analyses where the main focus have been the interactions between human beings, which means everything from the interaction between parents and child as well as the interaction between families and society.

We wanted to investigate any possible alterations within the working system between 1931–1940. Our analysis showed that there hasn’t been a big change with the Swedish legislation. There had however been a slight change in the reasons as to why parents and society got in touch with Social services and reported any mistreatment in the families.

There were many people especially from the lower working class that couldn’t afford proper apartments or provide child care for their children. This was the main reason for them to apply to the Child Care Board. Many young single mothers who didn’t have any family to care for them applied to join their infants at the protective homes, this was a special home which was often used as a nursery if the children’s parents where at hospital or for some other reason couldn’t care for them. If Social services found the home situation as bad as to impede the Child development, the secure homes would be used as a safe place until a suitable foster home could be found.

The closer we got to the 1940s we saw that the reasoning behind society applying to Social services where mostly illness within the family. Tuberculosis had Malmö in an iron fist and both adults and children got the dreaded disease. The World War II started in 1939 which also automatically forced the male population leave their homes, wives and children. This caused problems within the individual families. It meant that a lot of mothers now had to start working in order to support the rest of the family until their husbands returned home. For many of them the only way to survive during time was to allow the children to be taken into foster care.